According to (Green & Bowie, 2005,p. 10) In 1990, the Patient Self – Determination Act was implemented. This required consumers to be provided with informed consent, information about their right to make advance health care decisions (called advance directives), and information about state laws that impact legal choices in making health care decisions. The Patient Self- Determination Act affects the delivery of healthcare in the sense you now have to allow the patient to make the choice on their advance directive.
Being able to decide whether you want to be resuscitated or not, power of attorney over your healthcare, living will and more is now a choice you can make is a lot better for a patient. This way it allows the patient to have the last say on his or her life. Records management has had to more than likely implement a procedure to allow the person’s choice to show on their file. The only way to do this is through a step process to assure accuracy in charting as well as review records for completeness, accuracy and compliance with regulations.
Protect the security of medical records to ensure that confidentiality is maintained. This part of legislation in any facility has to be kept up as it is mandated. So again this will involved planning, development, maintaining and operating a variety of health record indexes and storage and retrieval systems to collect, classify, store and analyze this information. This is the best way for records management to work with the new legislation.